machineiv

Back when I was a wee kid, my grandmother used to make some wonderful dishes between fighting vehemently with my grandfather, my mother and pretty much anyone that would listen.

She was Dutch. Or more appropriately, Deutsche. You see, when the German settlers came over, common parlance involved not really pronouncing things correctly. It's the American Way™, fuck off. So when I call this recipe "My Grandma's Dutch Apple Pie Recipe," I actually mean, "My Grandma's German Apple Pie Recipe."

Enough nostalgia and bitching. Allez cuisine!

The recipe is for two pies. I prefer to go this route, it wastes less spices, and tends to allow for a better distribution of apples. Or you could half it. But I'm telling you, once you taste this fucking pie, one pie will not be enough. If it is, you can piss off.

Ingredients
- Get 20 apples. This is important. Get 10 of a sweet variety, 10 of a sour variety. Common Red Delicious and Granny Smith work well. In fact, I won't tolerate another sour, since my Grandma's last name was Smith. I'm pretty sure going against naming conventions would fuck you. FRESH, JUICY APPLES. There is no compromise here. Anything less will result in a terrible pie.
- Get two pie crusts. You can use a store bought, or you can make one. This process is a whole different recipe, one I won't go into right now. If you're making a crust, go heavy on the butter. You'll be rewarded.
- 1 cup sugar. You can use half Splenda if you want. Do not use more. Trust me.
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour. This is important. White flour. No weird wheat blends.
- 5 tablespoons corn starch.
- 2 tablespoons cinnamon. This assumes you're using imitation. If you have real cinnamon, use half that. There's no taste difference.
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg. Fresh ground is better, but only a real food nazi will be able to discern the two.
- 1 teaspoon allspice.
- 1 tablespoon ginger. Don't use fresh ginger. It'll muck up the recipe.

If you have an apple core cutter, your life will be easier. You need to cut and peel all those apples. If you have to do it by hand, cut the slices at about a half an inch each, err on the bigger side if you like rich apple taste, err on the smaller side if you like spices more. While slicing, cut out brown spots. Those will not be tasty.

Take everything else, all the dry goods, and mix them in a bowl. They will be further referred to as "spices."

Once you have the apples all cut, preheat your oven to 425.

Dust the pie crust with your spices. Put a nice, liberal layer down.

Lay down a layer of apple slices. Pack them pretty tight, but not enough to hurt the apples.

Put down a layer of spices. The apples should grab onto the spices. Again, be a little liberal here. It doesn't matter if you go over just a bit. But going under will suck.

Put down another layer of apples. Wedge them between the apples of the prior layer.

Repeat with the spices.

Repeat with the apples.

Keep doing this until your apples stand about an inch and a half to two inches above the pie crust, and put a final layer of spices atop it all.

Make your second pie.

Put those fuckers in the oven for about 10-12 minutes at 425. After you're done with that time, turn the oven down to 350. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN. You will muck up the recipe and fail at life. Leave them in there for at least 45 minutes or until soft. I prefer my apples super soft, so I go for a full hour. That also caramelizes the spices a bit more.

Get them out. Let them rest for at least ten minutes before eating them. I prefer to refrigerate them for a couple of hours first, but I like cool pies.

There. My grandma's trade secret. Deutsch Apple Pie.

You're welcome.

This is the new bug. She's 7lbs, 8oz. She's 20 inches. 

She's awesome. 



And this is her with her awesome mommy. 

I'm not entirely sure I have words for all this. Tina's excited. She says, "Kay-cee-uh" every few minutes. 

My friend Duane is doing an awesome zombie RPG. 

He's prereleasing it for 6$. How awesome is that?

You know what's better? I'm offering you a deal. You buy his product, and comment on the Machine Age Productions blog, and I'll give you 4$ off Maschine Zeit when we release it mid 2010. 

How awesome is that?

 

Picture taken by my friend Kelly from the Convention Fans blog. 

This is just in case you ever wondered what happens when my daughter goes to conventions. She negotiates with bounty hunters. As a fairy. Because that's how she rolls. 

You have a few minutes, and want to do a favor?

Make a Terminus Est character. Post it on your blog or other accessible place, and link back to Machine Age Productions. Links are how the internet eat, breathes and shits. Links help.

If you want some ideas, here's a handful of characters. Also, there are a few more in the first logged playtest.

Terminus Est is officially in layout. We're working through art, it has a badass cover, and it should be released Relatively Soon Now™.

Have you not read it yet? You can download the working draft here. Rectify it.

It's a good thing this guy had guns in his house.

If we ban guns, we only take them out of the hands of law-abiding citizens!!!

If these gun stores were exercising their Second Amendment rights, they wouldn't have been robbed.

Every one of these links is an instance where guns entered the market through initially legal means. Every instance has a legal firearm fall into the hands of criminals, often in bulk.

Saying that banning guns would only take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens is silly self-imposed ignorance of facts at best, a flat-out lie at worst. 

We know that the states with the most guns have the most stolen guns. This is a fact. We know that almost all guns used in violent crimes entered the market legally. There's not a mysterious black market that manufactures, imports or otherwise provides all criminals with guns. Street deals sell guns that were legally purchased through third parties, or were procured through illicit dealers initially. In fact, a majority of the guns used in crimes are purchased from licensed retail dealers. 

In every major school shooting, the guns used were initially purchased within legal means. 

Originally posted here, by fellow writer and all-around good guy, Chuck Wendig. I figured he said most of what I'd want to, so why restate?

How Deep Our Disappointment, How Swift The Cynicism

You’d think that winning the Nobel Peace Prize was a good thing.

You’d think it, but you might be wrong. Unless you’ve been camping out in a concrete bunker for the last several weeks (likely waiting the Liberal Apocalypse that will come when all people receive free health care and turn into a rampaging zombie army), you know that our president, Barack Obama, won hisself the Nobel Peace Prize.

You also might possess the sentiment that somehow, this isn’t deserved. Or it’s premature. Or that he should decline it. Oh, the indignation! Fie! Fie on Barack Obama and a handful of Norwegians!

Man, what a bunch of assholes we are. Oh, shit, sorry! Sorry that the Nobel committee didn’t call on you, John Q. Cock-n-Fist, to see if you thought this year’s nominee would deserve the award. You know, I’d bet half the smacked-asses who feel it necessary to wade in with this argument don’t even know what the Nobel Peace Prize is. They damn sure don’t know who’s won it in the past. (If they did, they’d probably shit in their hats.) Smart money says they can’t even spell the name. (Newsflash, it isn’t Noble, it’s Nobel.)

How cynical we’ve become. The guy — our president, the guy who represents us on the global stage— gets a big award, and we just want to poop on it? People. People. He’s us. We won the fucking award. Not just him. Us! It signals an American return to prominence, a vote for idealism, a vote for that silly hope thing that people once used to possess and that our current president claims to embody. Over the last eight years the country maybe wasn’t swirling the drain, but we had certainly pulled up the stopper. And yet, even with that in mind, I don’t think it’s exactly fair to say he won it because he’s “not George Bush.” Really? Is that how cynical we’ve become?

I grow weary of this meme going around that our president hasn’t done anything. He’s done more in his first nine months than some president have accomplished in four years. And winning the Nobel is as much about what he’s accomplished (diplomacy, the start of healing race relations, a call to end nuclear proliferation) as it is the potential for what he can accomplish in his remaining three years. You know what you can do? Start passing around the meme that our president has done all kinds of shit. List his accomplishments. (I was going to suggest that you make stuff up — “Remember when Obama liberated the Gill-Men by negotiating a treaty with the Star Ponies?” — but I guess that would undercut the message that he’s done real stuff.)

I’ll say it again: what assholes we are! The guy has the crud-fuckiest job in the history of jobs. (And I don’t even know what “crud-fuckiest” means, other than it suggests the fucking of crud.) And we want to give him the finger? “Hey, Obama, here’s a country where the economy is a greasy turd sliding down the toilet bowl. We torture. We’re mired in two wars. The world hates us. Health care costs are killing everybody — what a fun irony! We wantonly choke the environment. Conservatism is a dream. The government had unprecedented power to fuck with its own citizens. Iran wants the bomb. North Korea wants the bomb. Israel wants to bomb everybody who might get the bomb because they secretly have the bomb already. Al Qaeda wants us dead. The Taliban is resurgent. Our children are getting stupider. Science has taken a backseat to religion. This all happened in the last eight years. You have nine months to clean it all up. If it isn’t fixed in nine months, we’re going to be super-pissed! Good luck, you poor bastard!”

Everything’s not magically fixed with a wave of his pixie wand, and we’re mad? Even though everything’s in motion? Even though he’s masterfully spinning like, a thousand plates to try to patch up the holes in our sinking ship, and we’re going to throw cans at his head? Christ. It can take like, two years just to get a movie through development or build a fucking city park and we’re all sassed because he hasn’t flown around the planet like Superman and turned back time in less than a year?

What assholes we are.

You know what this is like?

Let’s say you’re the passenger in a car, sitting next to the driver, and you decide that the best course of action is to start smacking him in the face repeatedly. Whack whack whack! You’re smacking him in the mouth, in the eyes, in the nose. Whack whack whack! Hey, you know what? As it turns out, it’s hard to drive a car when the passengers are hitting you in the face.

I don’t agree that you can’t criticize a president. I don’t agree that it’s unpatriotic to disagree, or even to dislike the president. I do think it’s unreasonable to hold the president to some mythic, golden standard, however, especially when we let the last guy throw up in the hot tub and take a drunken whizz on the Constitution, though. I do think it’s counter-productive to sandbag the dude who’s carrying our hopes and dreams on his bowing back.

I don’t agree that the GOP is “siding” with the terrorists by criticizing Obama’s Nobel win. (The Taliban banned opium production once, which is arguably a good thing. Because I believe it was a good thing, am I a Talibani cleric? Probably not.) I do think it’s bad gamesmanship, and is further proof that the GOP is growing incapable of demonstrating honor and fairness. I do think the GOP/RNC shows its true colors by not saying something like, “We congratulate the president and hope he uses it as a mandate to turn this country around.”

This guy is our leader. He’s us right now. He’s driving the boat. Don’t kill the boat captain unless you know how to drive the goddamn boat.

Let me paint for you another scenario:

We criticize Obama until we’re blue in the face. We turn public sentiment against him because he doesn’t shit unicorns and because his smile can’t fix everything. Instead of constructing, we demolish. Come the next election cycle, we limit or overturn the Democratic majority. And in the next cycle after that, maybe we lose Obama himself. And we get… very possibly Jeb Bush. Or Sarah Palin. Or Glenn Beck acting as Lambchop to Dick Chaney’s Shari Lewis (hand up ass and everything). Is that what you want? Then keep on slagging. Keep on gnawing away at the administration’s efforts like a battalion of hungry termites. Our goal is to challenge our president to do good things. Our goal is to keep up the pressure. Criticism must be tempered with solution. What happened to us? We’ve been gutted, our scarecrow bodies stuffed with the itchy hay of disappointment and cynicism, and if we can’t find a way to turn that around, to embrace realism andoptimism instead of cynicism, we’re fucked. We might as well bend over and let all kinds of foreign objects get shoved in our eager, open asses.

What’s the mandate, here?

Let’s stop being a bunch of assholes.

(Reading materials: Andrew Sullivan and Joan Walsh.)

(Also, apologies for making far too little sense with this rambly screed. I have a head full of treacle; I’m trying desperately to punch this cold in the throat and make a break for freedom. I’m almost there! Freeeedoooom!)

This past weekend, I met a wonderful human being.

Her name is Leslie "L.A." Banks. She writes NY Times Best-Selling urban fantasy/paranormal romance novels. I doubt I'd like them, I'm not usually into that sort of thing, but that's not really important to this post.

I met her at Phauxcon, which was a wee little convention in Philly covering horror/sci-fi, and all that. My wife and I spoke there for a bit, it was a blast. Anyway, she told her life story, which was a remarkably compelling thing. Without going into too much depth, she had a good deal of tragedy in her life, and she got into writing after actually having a real, full career. She got into the whole paranormal romance thing long before it was a huge section of every bookstore. 

The focus here though was something specific she said. She explained to us that after having published three books that she wrote almost accidentally (the first came out of writing for an essay contest, and realizing she went over their page count by seventy-five pages, and she wasn't even close to being done,) she was approached for a television tie-in. Then, she was approached to do a tie-in for the anniversary of Scarface. This is where she said it (paraphrased, since I wasn't recording the discussion): 

"I was waiting for them to figure me out. I never really thought of myself as a writer, and I was just waiting for the other hand to drop." 

She's sold thirty-five novels now. She said she still can't pinpoint when she actually became a writer. 

Another important thing she said was in relation to deadlines. She was approached by a publisher, asked to write a novel in six weeks. She didn't think twice. The publisher was weirded out that Leslie wasn't intimidated. She said: 

"Nobody ever told me about wordcounts or pagecounts or anything like that. Nobody ever told me that it was hard to just sit down and write twenty-five pages in a night, so it never occurred to me that might be a problem." 

Mind you, she wrote this book in six weeks, while working a full-time job and taking care of four children. 

She commenced to explain about how she's a black woman from West Philly, and how she was writing her books for her peers and neighbors, that authenticity means everything to her, even in a book about romances between vampires and werewolves. 

Now, she has graphic novels in the works because of fans working at Marvel who fell in love with her material. She's had musicians write songs "in-character" for her material. 

This woman has inspired the shit out of me. Everything I've done this week, I keep harking back to that talk. What I think was best was, we managed to do the same for her. During our panel about vampires and gaming, she was nodding. She was contributing. She was asking questions. She had recently went to Dragon Con, and specifically noticed Vampire: The Requiem. She was curious about it. So hell, we might be recruiting a gamer out of the whole ordeal. 

I've just addressed a million different things in this post. But what it all comes down to is, I love that humble approach to writing. I love that she's a working writer, that she's doing what she loves, and she's not taking shit about it. She's telling cool stories that a lot of people can relate to, people who might otherwise not have access to fantasy/sci-fi/horror they could really relate to. She's dedicated to strong female characters and sympathetic, minority male characters.

It's down-to-earth. It's real. It's totally fucking cool. 

This needs to get to the Supreme Court, like immediately. 

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/08/oklahoma-abortion-online/

How does the legislation in Oklahoma think this is even remotely Constitutional? 

Today, Al Franken introduced an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations Bill. This bill would disallow funding for any defense contractors who do not allow raped employees their day in court due to "arbitration clauses."

68 voted for the bill. It passed with overwhelming majority. While that's excellent, 30 Senators voted to protect the corporations that condone rape. Here's the list. Understand that these men (every female GOP Senator voted in favor of the amendment) do not care about you. They do not care about your safety. They do not care about your security. The dollar is more important to them than a woman's right to not be raped.

If you are in any of these states, I urge you to communicate with these Senators. Mail them. Email them. Call them. 

Let them know that rape is not acceptable, and defense (and financial promotion) of companies that condone it is atrocious and unacceptable. 

NAYs ---30
Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN)	Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE)	Kyl (R-AZ) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS)

Also: Two "Democratic" Senators refrained from voting. Byrd from West Virginia, and our own Arlen Specter refrained from voting. (Note, Byrd may not have voted due to health issues. That is a possibility.)

Specter really needs to get his priorities straight.

 Check it out. It's done. Free RPG, people! 

It'll go through playtesting and edits, then get art and full PDF/POD treatment, but this is the meat of the game. 

Love it. Make a character for it. Cross-post that character here. Provide notes. Do whatever you'd like. 

Originally posted here.

What are you doing this weekend? If it isn’t dinner with the President, and your within a hundred thousand miles of Philadelphia,  you should probably drop it and come down to Phauxcon 2009. http://www.phauxcon.com

Why? Well, because you can get you geek on, talk about vampires AND see my husband, (David Hill’s,) hit panel “Design an RPG in an Hour.” Come see that, grab some lunch, and after lunch come back to see us talking about Vampires at your gaming table. Here are the blurbs.

Design an RPG in an Hour

We’re making a pen and paper RPG, and you’re invited to the design meeting. During the panel, you’ll address the problem-solving and analytical questions required to design a successful game. During the discussion, we’ll discuss the basics of game theory and how to outline, centered around an example you’re participating in. Soon after, the fruits of your labor will be published online as a downloadable ebook.

and

Filamena Young, a fiction and game writer, and David Hill, an Ennie Award winning game writer, want you to bring more fang to into your roleplaying. Both Filamena and David have worked on numerous products from White Wolf Publishing, (publishers of Vampire: the Requiem,) but also write for many types of pen and paper games. With a strong understanding of the vampire myth from early Slavic plagues of the undead to the modern Paranormal Romantic dreamboats, there isn’t a vampire that can’t find a comfortable way into your game, no matter what you play.

They’ll be lots of other stuff going on, but I wanted to make sure you all knew to check it out. Have a great weekend and if I don’t see you at the Con, tell Obama I said hi! 

Racism has nothing to do with the opposition to the Obama administration. 

The opposition consists of legitimate opinions and policy concerns that should be heard out.

Like this guy.

This is a legitimate concern, a problem with simians that are in control at the white house. 

Obama is this guy's president. He needs to listen to his concerns, and help eliminate the monkey problem in Washington.
 

This stuff has been going around the internets. I figured I'd chime in with some opinions, my own views of sexism in video gaming today. Check it out.

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-9276-Philadelphia-Gaming-Lifestyle-Examiner~y2009m9d17-Alpha-Protocol-Mass-Effect-and-Thoughts-On-Progress-in-Gaming-Sexism

 I love that Fox thinks that if they keep throwing shit at ACORN, eventually something will stick. 

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/fox-gets-punkd-acorn-volunteer-knew

This is probably my favorite picture of her currently. It knocks me out every damned time I see it.



 That is all.

But if you want, there's more. 

http://machineageproductions.com/

Here's the new website for my creative endeavors. If you're interested, check it out, RSS the fuck out of it. Participate in discussions.

Right now, I'm talking on Terminus Est. I'm developing it publicly. Every day or two, I'm adding some content. I'm answering comments, I'm taking some of them into the game.

The community is participating in my design meeting, as Will Hindmarch put it.  

So, I'm writing quite a bit.

Just not here.

Check out the design blog for the awesome Creative Commons project I'm doing. Three posts today. There will be more.

I seem to be doing more talking on my Twitter than anywhere else.

Next Saturday, September 12, I'll be doing a panel at Game Core Con. If you're interested, it's on RPG design, and at 11am. My lovely wife is doing a panel at the same convention at 3pm, on the topic of girls in gaming. 

I believe in October I might be speaking at two conventions in the Philly metro area. I'm not entirely sure. More as that gets solidified.

What else am I doing? 

- A Vampire the Requiem project. The official title hasn't been announced (or settled on, for that matter,) but it'll be superb. Like, I get excited to sit down at the keyboard. 

- I've been doing a little development work for an indie house. The first project in question is a class for Pathfinder. It's 1.75$, so there's really very little excuse to not go buy it and review the crap out of it. There should be many more of these projects in the future. 

- I'm writing an article for Goodman Games's Level Up magazine. That's more than a little awesome. More on that as it develops. 

- I've finished a piece for an upcoming Shadowrun supplement. It's still in the editing process. Hopefully, it should be out early next year. 

- I recently did a Pathfinder module for Heroic Journey Publishing. I believe that's slated for about a November release. 

Holy shit, I've been busy. 

Kanye West	Glenn Beck	Match?
Proudly black.	Proudly white.	No
Proud non-reader.	Obvious non-reader.	Yes!
Tells anyone who listens that the president is a racist.	Tells anyone who listens that the president is a racist.	Yes!
Is a vocal worshipper of Christ.	Is a vocal worshipper of Christ.	Yes!
Wrote a "book."	"Wrote" a book.	Close...
Babbles incoherently.	Babbles incoherently.	Yes!
Raps about owning guns.	Whines about owning guns.	Close...
Beat up a photographer.	Raped and murdered a girl in 1990.	No.

My assessment? They're close enough to be mistaken for the same person. It would answer a lot of my questions about the world. 

EDIT: Parodied Kanye quote redacted. 

One of the best electronic acts out there, The Atomica Project (http://theatomicaproject.com/), is going on tour.

5 Sep, Sat Chicago, IL

9 Sep, Wed Danbury, CT

10 Sep,Thu Philadelphia, PA

11 Sep, Fri Boston, MA

12 Sep, Sat New York, NY

13 Sep, Sun Pittsburgh, PA

17 Sep, Thu Madison, WI

If you can, see them. Seriously, you will not be disappointed. If you're into Ladytron, Bjork, Massive Attack, it's in the same vein.

If it bears mentioning, I will be at the Philly show. So if you have the chance, come and say hi.